We are all aware of how badly taking Victor Timely to the TVA will be right?

We are 3/3 in my books so far for Season 2 of Loki, yet it seems as if one disaster only leads to another. There are many sides still fighting for different things, which you know will only make this situation a lot worse. Don’t worry, I have some great ideas on how they might all start to see eye to eye, which I’ll share in a moment. But we now have a Kang variant on the board, as I called, and the stakes of this game are only increasing as Miss Minutes and Ravonna Renslayer make their reappearance and team up clear. We’ll get into all this in one second, but first, you know the drill. Take a listen to our corresponding podcast episode by clicking the button below to listen on your platform of choice, or start listening live with the link provided.

Victor Timely – Here Comes Another Kang Variant

The sixth distinct Kang variant has made his official appearance in this episode. Victor Timely is Kang’s variant that lives on the Sacred Timeline and who should have passed through his life there fully undetected, like most others. However, we know that the path he is now on was set forth by Miss Minutes and Renslayer executing a plan by He Who Remains, even if it isn’t going according to plan.

First things first is addressing the fact that He Who Remains, a Kang variant, is still likely a variant or version of Nathaniel Richards, as in the comics. It is likely that He Who Remains chose a variant of himself that not only has a different name but that he knew would be unharmful to be the one that lives on the Sacred Timeline. Now, you might be asking why he bothered to keep a variant of himself at all, and quite frankly, the answer is to execute this contingency plan when the time is needed. He Who Remains knew he wouldn’t live forever, he saw that his time would quite literally end, so he made sure to have a variant set up to take his place when he needed it. A variant, again, that would sit quietly until needed and would maybe be slightly less homicidal than the others.

Yet on that note, things with Timely can go one of two ways. Remember they are messing with how things are supposed to have gone, as they created a branched timeline by giving Victor the TVA guidebook. No matter how sweet he appears to be or how adamant he was to Sylvie that he can make his own choices, we can never forget he is a Kang variant. By taking him back to the TVA, he might be able to help them fix the loom not just through his temporal essence but by helping O.B. and Casey create the new loom. Or, he could make his way to the TVA and begin to turn into the villain. Now that we are through episode 3, we might start having a little bit more of a clear direction on the true antagonist in this season, so it is possible we will see his spiral into villainy.

Another theory, going off Victor remaining pure, is that we instead run into another variant, possibly one we already saw. The second end credit of Quantumania showed a stadium of Kangs, yet we were introduced to specifically three at the end. To help bring that storyline through as well, we could see another Kang variant appear to play the big bad of the season. It would also help with continuity, as we are pretty limited in works about the Multiverse in the next two years as we lead up to Kang Dynasty. Loki Season 2 is one of the first places that a Kang variant showing up would make the most sense, but I think this all depends on Victor and how he acts when we see him next episode in the TVA.

Miss Minutes and Renslayer Team Up

We finally have our official return of Ravonna Renslayer and Miss Minutes and we can confirm they are up to absolutely no good. Our welcome-back introduction to them begins with them messing with Victor Timely. Miss Minutes gives us the vital information that He Who Remains had a backup plan, as we mentioned before and these two just so happen to be the ones who take up the job. However, things don’t go according to plan for them for a few reasons.

Let’s just move right past the elephant in the room and mention the weird love Miss Minutes has for He Who Remains and subsequently Victor. It was one of those things you slowly began to see coming but just wished it wouldn’t because it was so uncomfortable. But it did foreshadow something that could be pretty interesting, which is if Miss Minutes were to get a physical body, aka getting that Jarvis update. We know that He Who Remains, whether on purpose or not, chose not to ever allow her to fully be a solid being, so let’s say he had a reason for this. Remember that Miss Minutes is one of if not the most advanced AI that has untapped access to the entirety of the TVA and pretty much all of time. If she were to get a real body, she could go full Aida (Agents of SHIELD reference) and control everything, locking everyone else out or doing a whole lot worse.

On the other side of this story, though, is the final scene of the episode, with Miss Minutes and Renslayer standing in front of He Who Remains’ body at the end of time. Miss Minutes sets a very ominous tone when she tells Renslayer that she knows a huge secret about her and Renslayer is going to be really mad about it. Now for those who may have listened to our season 1 reactions, we did talk about Renslayer having a relationship with Kang in the comics and that there is a likelihood we might see it come to fruition in the show. We never saw it in season 1, but season 2 is already planting the seeds between Renslayer and Victor, strengthening the chances of seeing some sort of relationship somewhere. We also know that Loki heard Renslayer talking to He Who Remains on a recording from the past. So here’s the theory: Renslayer is from He Who Remains’ timeline and he kept her with him after winning the Multiversal war against his variants and creating one Sacred Timeline. For whatever reason, one we’re sure will be revealed, He Who Remains created the man behind the curtain ruse in the TVA and that would be when Renslayer was wiped and forced to forget him while he lived at the end of time. They very likely had a relationship and she probably helped build the TVA, which is what Miss Minutes knows and also would be why she is so jealous of Renslayer throughout this episode.

Loki Faces His Past, Again

Before Loki Season 2 debuted, one of our recent newsletters took up the debate of whether we could ever see Loki return to the Sacred Timeline. Yet now that we are watching Loki Season 2, there seem to be more and more hints that either a reunion or some ‘facing his past’ scene might be coming our way. Episode 2 gave us two of these hints, teaching us that a variant has been able to return to the Sacred Timeline and then having Loki reference his invasion of New York, which happened really not too long for this Loki. Then episode 3 came around and we got another great easter egg with Loki traveling back to Chicago and coming face to face with statues of his father and brother.

Yet it’s actually Mobius who makes the most interesting comment by saying something along the lines of “I forget you’re one of them”. It’s as if the show is going out of its way to remind us that Loki is still from the Sacred Timeline, even if he isn’t the one we saw get his neck snapped in Infinity War. So now we revisit the debate: could we ever see this Loki return? Now, of course, I could be reading into things, but if these little nuggets aren’t leading to a possible reunion with this Loki and the Sacred Timeline in the place where his brother is, then I would genuinely be shocked. There are too many easter eggs, including Loki already returning to the Sacred Timeline himself, to make me think he wouldn’t be curious about his return, especially, when he is egging on Mobius about his past life as well.

Sylvie Cosplaying as He Who Remains

The final moment we need to emphasize is Sylvie again entering the situation that she claims to not want to be involved in. Yet we all know it’s bigger than that and she makes that very clear in Episode 3. Sylvie swears that it is her job to take out all the Kang variants that could come and that’s why she comes after Victor. In the meantime, she has begun to play the role of He Who Remains, albeit a smaller version of it, but is deciding the fate of those on the timeline.

We all know Victor should’ve lived his life quietly on the Sacred Timeline and never even raised a red flag, something Sylvie herself even confirms. But how does Sylvie know that? We know she has He Who Remains’ tempad, so is she getting information from that? And who is she to decide who can and can’t live, who can be a variant and create a branched timeline, and who can’t? She is taking on the role of He Who Remains, deciding that his variants, no matter who they are, have to be eliminated. Doesn’t scream giving people free will to me.

We know that by the end of the series, Sylvie will appear at the TVA one more time and have to make some hard decisions with Loki. We threw the theory out earlier that they might as a duo take on the role of He Who Remains, ‘playing god’ to decide what stays and goes. While I don’t think the TVA will return to snipping branches, it may be possible that the team realizes they can’t just let it all happen freely. As Sylvie already seems to have decided to step into He Who Remains’ role, it wouldn’t seem a far stretch to combine their needs and the needs of the Multiverse into one system with Loki and Sylvie at the top.

Conclusion

We have now seen almost every scene from the trailer in the first three episodes, so from here on out, we are flying nearly entirely blind through this series. Anything could happen when a variant of Kang and two Loki variants are involved. We are ready for episode 4, so make sure you are, too. Continue keeping up with Loki Season 2 and our podcast reaction episodes, as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Loki Season 2 Episode 3”, Philip Ellis, Mens Health